


any day now

by dzesi



Series: second best ain't bad [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, Mixed Signals, One-Sided Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio, lowercase aesthetic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:02:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25412827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dzesi/pseuds/dzesi
Summary: in which hinata makes like a tree and pines.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou & Kozume Kenma, Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio
Series: second best ain't bad [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1840579
Comments: 10
Kudos: 66





	any day now

**Author's Note:**

> previously posted as the first chapter of "second best ain't bad" but i'm splitting it into separate pieces!

everybody wants to kiss kageyama.

he’s beautiful, for one.

“he’s so tall and quiet,” girls in his class have been known to say.  
“you mean, he’s too dumb to speak,” tsukishima usually corrects. but even he can’t argue—kageyama is definitely handsome.

the thing is, he’s got nice eyes, and nice hair, and nice hands, and nice all the rest of him, and all his nice friends kinda want to suck his face.

there’s a pool going, a race, kind of, mostly unspoken but sometimes legitimately discussed out loud and with great seriousness—who will be the first one to finally get to kiss kageyama?

“let’s be real, it’s probably gonna be hinata,” tanaka jokes, and nishinoya laughs too loud.

frankly, hinata is pretty sure he has official dibs, and if it ever comes down to a right-place-right-time kind of situation, he’s pretty confident in his chances, because he’s basically never not within arm’s reach.

sometimes when they argue, they catch their faces way too close together, and hinata is absolutely fucking certain he’s picking up signals because literally how can he not be, but then other times kageyama tries to throw him just for sitting a little too close.

“does kageyama even want to kiss boys?” yamaguchi sounds genuinely curious.

“hard to say,” tsukishima yawns. “honestly, does the king want to kiss anybody? is his brain even capable of love? it’s a complete mystery.”

but the mystery is exactly why the question is such a black hole for hinata’s attention.

“kageyama’s such, like... a cat person,” hinata whines to kenma without irony. “not, like, you... you’re like, a real cat-person…” (“excuse me?” kenma tries to interrupt, but hinata just keeps going) “...and not somebody who likes cats, either—i think they all hate him?—but, like, a person whose soul just, contains... all the worst aspects of cats.”

“wow,” kenma, a true friend, replies noncommittally, correctly assuming that he just needs to make an agreeable noise so hinata can keep talking.

“it’s like, you can’t come at him with too much enthusiasm, like if you run up like—” hinata makes a loud, excited onomatopoeia through the phone “—it just makes him even frownier. like the more you want his attention, or his affection, or whatever, the harder he’s just gonna shoot you down!”

“his affection?” kenma doubtfully echoes, when hinata pauses to take a breath.

“i think he takes, like, a sick sort of joy in saying no to people… which i don’t get at all because i never wanna say no to anybody about anything!—”

“we know, shoyou.”

...anyway, you get the picture.

but, it turns out on those rare occasions kageyama does say yes, decides he’s into it, shows up to the parties, he fucking commits. he tells the truths. he does the dares. he takes off his shirt when noya and tanaka’s hamfisted strip games tell him to.

one night, after a rousing evening of underage drinking and hilariously volleyball-themed would-you-rathers, hinata and kageyama find themselves sharing a guest futon. they lie side by side in their underwear, squeezing their eyes closed and trying their damnedest not to fall off the floor as the room spins.

when kageyama rolls over, hinata waits a few heartbeats and then follows.

“kageyama?” he whispers, leaning so close he can smell his shampoo on the pillow in front of his nose.

“go to sleep, dumbass.”

hinata wiggles a tiny bit closer, just until he starts to feel kageyama’s warmth against his chest. “...can i?”

he gets back a sigh of acceptance, and figures it’s as good as he’s gonna get, so he scoots the rest of the way and spoons him, toes dangling down around kageyama’s calves.

hinata puts his arm around him, like he’s always wanted to, and kageyama lets him. and he smooshes his face in between his shoulder and his ear, and kageyama lets him do that, too, so he presses a soft, dry kiss to his shoulder, gets away with it, and falls asleep so happy like that.

aaand then they never talk about it ever again, and kageyama gets even frownier than usual whenever hinata tries to get too close for a while... but after that, it’s all back to normal, like nothing ever happened.

that’s not even the only time they snuggle, either!

“just waiting for his walls to come down,” he texts kenma, and then sprinkles in some random emoji, just to keep him on his toes.

“sounds like a roller coaster,” kenma texts back. (they really do talk about other things sometimes, honestly.)

it just seems like such an inevitability, is what it comes down to. so when time keeps passing and nothing ever happens, perfect moments coming and going like missed cues and still nobody gets to kiss kageyama, the team eventually stops joking about it and the whole thing kinda fizzles. (except for hinata, for whom it was never a joke, and whose entire life remains dedicated to being right there, just in case his best friend ever decides to let him kiss his stupid face.)

but time doesn’t stop, even when you’re all tied up in waiting for something, treading emotional water in a constant state of soon-almost-maybe-tomorrow anticipation.

time still passes and bodies are still bodies and while he never gives up the dream of that perfect, inevitable kiss, of falling perfectly and inevitably into kageyama’s perfect (inevitable) arms, hinata’s also a fucking teenage boy, and he wants to get laid.

nothing changes about their relationship, necessarily; they’re still best friends, and hinata could be checking his gag reflex next to a dumpster and still pick up the phone for kageyama’s ringtone (“is this some kind of fucking joke?” oikawa had asked disbelievingly, while hinata rolled his eyes and jerked him off admirably throughout the whole short, meaningless conversation. oikawa will literally never let him live it down).

but, yeah, whenever kageyama’s got other things to do, homework or video games or family stuff, hinata’s roster of backup plans fills out pretty handsomely.

in a way he starts to miss the mixed signals, because being hot-and-cold with the love of your life means you DO feel the heat, at least sometimes, by definition—otherwise you’d never notice the cold bits. they never get more distant, never drift further apart, but so slowly he doesn’t notice, a particular kind of electricity drains out of their eye contact and that weirdly flirty stuff that hinata had arranged his life around maximizing his chances of happens less and less often. he can even barely remember the last time they hung out naked, for instance—but their teamwork is as strong as ever!

their friendship is rock fucking solid, too; kageyama seems to be happy and healthy, and everything’s so normal and fine that poor jilted hinata sometimes has to force himself to remember that all those heart-pounding almost-moments weren’t just pretty pictures behind his eyes while he writhed alone in his old pokémon bedsheets.

“i didn’t make it up,” hinata reminds himself, even once he decides to box up all those feelings and commit to being the best friend he can be to someone he used to jab and tease and flirt and sometimes even snuggle with, but now feels a little too guilty to let himself picture when he closes his eyes to somebody else’s hipbones.

it gets a little easier once he leaves the hemisphere.


End file.
